There were some, alas, who attempted to move the goalposts by suggesting to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney that the real measure of success is how many of those enrollees were previously uninsured, a number that is conveniently uncertain.

There were some, alas, who attempted to move the goalposts by suggesting to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney that the real measure of success is how many of those enrollees were previously uninsured, a number that is conveniently uncertain.

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The fight for the narrative on Obamacare continues apace, even with the announcement that the Affordable Care Act has achieved what seemed unachievable in November, December, or even as recently as yesterday: Despite the disastrous rollout of the Obamacare website, enrollments to ACA plans have exceeded 7 million. There were some, alas, who attempted to move the goalposts by suggesting to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney that the real measure of success is how many of those enrollees were previously uninsured, a number that is conveniently uncertain.

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In his response to ABC News' Jonathan Karl, Carney echoed House Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi in extolling the many provisions of Obamacare, and while he pointed out that the exact number of uninsured to enroll is impossible to pin down, he did cite a recent Gallup survey that showed the percentage of uninsured people dropping from 17.1% in December to 15.9% in March.

While Karl and Carney are correct that an exact figure is not known, this is not a complete mystery. Later in the briefing, I asked Carney to confirm that the study he cited actually showed a greater drop, from 18% to 15%, since the ACA's October rollout, and that the survey only included responses from early March (it was actually from Feb. 28), and did not include March's surge in enrollment. Carney agreed.

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I also asked Carney if he thought that this milestone might result in a turning point for television coverage of the Affordable Care Act, which has been uniformly negative, and inaccurate. " Would that it were so," Carney replied, and acknowledged that the negative coverage surrounding the rollout of the website "was earned, that's fair."

He added that "Having been a practitioner myself, I get it, conflict is news, and good news is often not news."

"There's still a conflict here that's worth covering," Carney continued, noting that while over 7 million people have enrolled under the ACA, " there is an active constituency within one party that is making it their number one priority to repeal those benefits, from those millions of Americans."

Referencing reporting on Healthcare.gov's temporary outages Monday, Carney said that one thing he found "frustrating" were headlines in major newspapers "that would suggest (Monday) was one of the worst days the Affordable Care Act ever had, when, in fact, it was very much the best day the Affordable Care Act ever had, so I scratch my head over that."

He also added that the goal is for "people with real stories to tell" to be heard.

President Obama would tell some of those stories a few hours later in the Rose Garden, but the mainstream media, particularly television, is where this battle will be fought, because that's where the Americans who decide elections are getting their news.

Reporters from Fox News and ABC News double-teamed Press Secretary Jay Carney using a right-wing study of an apparent White House gender pay gap, and CNN stuck the dismount by carving out the section of Carney's answer that seemed to validate that talking point. On Saturday morning's Melissa Harris-Perry show, host Melissa Harris-Perry demonstrated how the same tactic can be used from the left by accusing Jay Carney of "mansplaining" the gap, and similarly clipping his response to suit her narrative.

There was a lot of big news on Friday, but none bigger for The Daily Banter's White House beat than the resignation of White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, and the naming of Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest as Carney's replacement. We've got exclusive analysis of Carney's resignation by some of the reporters whom he'll be leaving behind, plus what we can expect from Earnest, who will accompany President Obama on his European trip next week.

Carney Derangement Syndrome has struck again, this time felling National Journal's Ron Fournier, who took to MSNBC's Morning Joe to deliver a measured criticism of White House Press Secretary Jay Carney Friday morning. Carney is taking heat from reporters over his insistence that a recently-released email about then-Ambassador Susan Rice's Sunday show prep was not about Benghazi, but about broader unrest in the Muslim world. Fournier's way of calling the White House's rationale thin was to equate Carney to "Baghdad Bob."

When Colbert pressed Carney on the many "tense" exchanges with ABC News' Jonathan Karl, Carney chalked it up to the "theatricality" of televised briefings. It's a common complaint, but that aspect of the briefings is actually a feature, not a bug.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, not surprisingly, has few fans among the conservative media, but for most of his tenure, has managed to avoid the sort of unhinged reactions that his predecessor, Robert Gibbs, provoked. This week, though, a charming little style-section profile in Washingtonian Mom set the conservative blogs frothing over everything from Carney's apparently overflowing pantry, to his magical book collection, to his home podium setup, but most of all, his... anti-Nazi decorations? Why do conservatives love Nazis?

Calling him "one of my closest friends here in Washington," President Obama explained that Jay Carney's five and a half years as an administration spokesman "placed a strain on his wife and his two wonderful kids."

Today's survey shows that the rate of uninsured Americans fell from 18 percent at the end of the third quarter of 2013 to 15.6 percent for the first quarter of 2014. That means about seven-and-a-half million people, slightly more than the number of enrollments reported by the Obama administration last week, but well short of what you might expect when you factor in the Medicaid expansion, which HHS says has increased Medicaid enrollment by more than 3 million.